The Indian Council of Medical Research—National Institute of Virology, Pune has isolated the viral strain of monkeypox for the first time in the country. The Institution has invited an Expression of Interest (EOI), proposing to hand over the strain to industry partners to develop indigenous vaccines and diagnostic kits for the disease.

On Wednesday, a senior official from the Health Ministry stated that ICMR-NIV has successfully isolated and cultured the monkeypox virus strains from the samples of infected patients in India. He added that the genomic sequence of the Indian strain matched the West African strain by 99.85%. There are two known types of monkeypox virus—one that originates from Central Africa and another one that originated in West Africa. Currently, the outbreak is caused by the less severe West African clade.

ICMR’s EOI documents stated that it has reserved all the Intellectual Property Rights and Commercialization Rights on the isolated monkeypox viral strain, including its method or protocol for purification, propagation, and characterization. It added that the Institute is legally entitled to enter into any form of non-exclusive agreements with drug/pharma/vaccine/IVD manufacturers for undertaking R&D and manufacturing activities for developing vaccines and diagnostic kits for the monkeypox virus. It also stated that the institute was willing to collaborate with experienced vaccine manufacturers as well as in-vitro diagnostic manufacturers on a royalty basis for a fixed term.